Low

I’m still just not okay. I haven’t spoken much today… and tomorrow is going to be so hard. But I wrote a poem.

For Jachin EstesAugust 3rd 2003
We’ll miss you…

Low

Everything is still and I wish I could move
I’m so frozen
If I saw a tear I think it would blow me off my feet
this just can’t be real.
I wish this world was a friendlier place
but gravity and oxygen are too much and too little
to save me.
I wish things could just be SILENT
I can’t think with you bombarding me
with all of this reality.
There’s been a face erased from my universe
that I want to mold into stone
but all I have are memories
not hope, not love, not goodbye.
Everything has been stripped away
from all the promise that we had
we are all born mobile–
I’m closing my eyes now, I’m closing my eyes.

A day of celebration will be shattered by the wake
I’m low, I’m apart, I’m a foreign country.
I wish this all were easier
or tolerable or acceptable
I wish it were a cruel joke
or prank like he used to play.
But the flowers are in mourning
and all the yards have been sewn
the plot is poured open
and I just wish that today didn’t exist.
I never thought I’d be the bearer of bad news
I didn’t know it, I didn’t know.

I’m like a trainwreck
that hasn’t happened yet and I know
that I have only one more mile to go.

Jachin Estes, 17, of Nanaimo drowned when the canoe he was trying to enter from a rope tied to the train trestle above capsized, according to Nanaimo RCMP.

Estes, who recently moved to Nanaimo from Terrace, was with two friends when the accident occurred. The three youth had tied a rope to the train trestle at the lower reaches of the river Sunday, and were using it to swing over the river and lower themselves down into a canoe.

When Estes lowered himself down, the canoe tipped and he was washed down river. Neither he nor his friends were wearing life jackets, according to RCMP.

Police say employees of the Bungy Zone tried to rescue the youth. CPR failed to resuscitate Estes, who was pronounced dead on arrival at hospital.

There has not been a death on the Nanaimo River since 2000. So far, the river has claimed more than 30 lives. Most of the deaths occur in the notorious Gun Barrel, a narrow chute above the train trestle.

That’s sad… only in the last year have I really realized home much death is around us all. I’m not sure if you read any of my rambling posts about the girl from Kitimat who was murdered by her father last week… Death is tragic…